IVORY COAST

Published: April 17, 1988

SHADED FROM THE HOT sun, Soro Zana works rapidly, cutting, slicing and chopping a block of cream-colored wood. Under the blows of his adze, an African mask quickly takes shape. Today Mr. Zana, a member of the Senufo tribe, is carving a mask in the style of his rivals, the Baule. He says he does not care -the mask, priced around $30, is destined for the tourist markets of Abidjan, 350 miles south of this Ivory Coast carving center of Korhogo.

Sophisticates from the United States and Europe dismiss such handiwork as Mr. Zana's as ''airport art.'' But African vendors are responding to this sort of criticism with a sophistication of their own: their masks make strange detours on the long road to Abidjan, spending a few nights in termite hills, then being kicked around and damaged to acquire a naturally ''stressed'' look.

In order to achieve as authentic-looking, multilayered patina, the masks may be smoked in cooking fires, stained with soot and water or rubbed with shoe polish. To show ''wear,'' parts of the interiors are sanded smooth and ''sweat marks'' are rubbed in.

Unlike masks that have not undergone the ''aging'' process, one that has will carry a price tag commensurate with its supposed rarity - $300. ''Very old,'' the vendor in Abidjan assures prospective buyers, reverentially holding up the three-month-old carving. For a more sophisticated buyer, who might equate authentic with used, the dealer will murmur knowingly. ''This mask has been danced.'' The only dancing has been between the African vendor and his Western client.

The tourist returns home to New York or Paris. The artifact wins a privileged place on a living-room wall, there to bask in the admiring regards of the local tribespeople. If the deceiver and the deceived part satisfied, who cares? ''Fake art is the biggest obstacle to collecting,'' said Susan Vogel, executive director of the Center for African Art in New York, in a recent telephone conversation. ''There are certain categories that people won't buy because there are so many fakes. Baule gold, for example - people won't touch it.''

Distinguishing between fake and real African art is the theme of a show scheduled to open at the center on May 12 - ''The Art of Collecting African Art.'' The show will feature exhibition cases containing real and fake examples of the same thing, such as a Baule bird. After studying the display, visitors can cross the room to discover which is which.

''I have seen the fakes become progressively more sophisticated,'' said Ms. Vogel. ''There is a level of fakes that can fool everyone.''

For years, African art specialists have wrestled with defining fake and authentic. ''Authentic has been defined as 'made by a traditional African carver for a traditional use,' '' said Christopher B. Steiner, a Fullbright researcher who is studying the Ivory Coast's art market. ''Faking implies intention to deceive.''

Beyond the definitions is a market driven by the buyer's desire for an authentic cultural artifact. Today, fakery flourishes in the laissez-faire, caveat-emptor environment of the markets in the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Zaire and Nigeria, the major art suppliers. In Africa, faking art is virtually an unprosecuted crime. Few Africans are stirred to outrage by tales of fellow Africans who trick tourists into paying hundreds of dollars for a fake. Outrage is stirred only by reports that foreigners are smuggling Africa's cultural heritage to Europe and the United States.

Just like Mr. Zana, a Senufo who carves Baule masks, the African art market has become highly sensitive to supply-and-demand signals. At the end of a long chain of exchange are Moslem Hausa traders. By virtue of their religion, they are able to move smoothly among West Africa's animist tribal groups. Pedaling bicycles loaded with items for trade - usually machetes and enameled cooking pots -they mine their territories with as much diligence as New York antiques dealers prowling New England villages in empty station wagons.

Some traders persuade villagers to part with their old masks by assuring them that replacements will be made in Korhogo. ''In some cultures - the Senufo, the Baule and the Gouro - age is not a factor for the value of the mask,'' said Mr. Steiner.

The Hausa trader keeps a close eye on changing tastes in the metropolitan marketplaces. Last fall, ''Potomo Waka,'' a glossy $85 book on Baule wooden slingshots, started appearing on coffee tables in Abidjan and New York. ''All of sudden I see Hausas coming in with 20 to 30 slingshots,'' Mr. Steiner said. ''A year ago they wouldn't have bothered.''

Demand has soared recently for old Venetian trade beads and Akan brass weights, as well as for ''colons'' -wooden statues of Africans in European dress or bearing the accoutrements of colonialism - top hats, kepis, rifles, safari shirts or tobacco pipes. Tourists find them charming because they believe they reflect the African's conception of the European. But, in the 1980's, all the colons reflect is mental Ping-Pong between the carver and the consumer.

The modern African carver, who grew up watching Eddie Murphy movies on television, is a canny judge of Europeans. Tourists, he correctly calculates, are convinced that the natives cherish warm, misty memories of the bygone colonial era.

''It's the statue a la mode,'' the carver said of his colons. In an African twist to the American trade in T-shirts printed with a tourist's portrait, African carvers will now carve colons of visiting tourists.

In Korhogo, the tourist trade has brought a new affluence to the traditional Kulebele carvers, a subgroup of the Senufo. In the Koko neighborhood, motorbikes abound and cement block has replaced mud brick.

Dolores Richter, an American anthropologist who studied the group in the 1970's, wrote in her book ''Arts, Economics and Change'': ''Because carvers are now devoted to carving full time rather than executing only an occasional poro, or prestige object, techniques have improved and carvers are more expert with their tools than in the past.'' (''Poros'' are secret societies that wield great power in traditional Ivoirian villages.) Fighting sophistication with sophistication, Americans are becoming warier buyers, Ms. Vogel believes. ''There is no quick test to tell a fake,'' she said. ''The best way is to look at loads and loads of objects. The well-trained eye is the best test.''

One recent evening visitors were shown around the dusty compound of Korhogo's biggest art dealer, Hadj Arabiou. After they inspected a large room where the walls were covered floor to ceiling with replica art, they were ushered with great ceremony into a musty chamber illuminated by a single bar of fluorescent light. It was the ''old'' room. After a cursory inspection of the jumbled collection of staffs, stools, drums, flutes, helmet masks, masks and brass weights, Mr. Steiner concluded that at least half of the ''old'' pieces were made in the 1980's.

''Americans know the old because they usually come with guides,'' sighed a Hausa trader in a caftan. ''But the French and Germans don't,'' he added, brightening.

Photo of an Ivorian in Korhogo carving a statue from caju wood (James Brooke)